Ethics of Business
“Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord.” Rom. xii: n.
“DUSINESS may be defined in a loose way as whatever one does for the purpose of making money. An Italian knife-grinder whom I met on the street corner informed me that he had been in the knife-grinding business about twenty years; and he was as truly a business man as the princely merchant or millionaire steel manufacturer. Some organ grinders, arrested for vagrancy, proved to the satisfaction of a New York court that they were in legitimate business which required close attention and hard work. The fruit-dealer on the sidewalk, the peddler with the pack on his back, trudgi ig through the country, the stone-breaker who uses his hammer on the street, the hod-carrier who climbs the ladder, the lawyer preparing his brief, the architect drawing his plans, the carpenter plying his trade, the banker investing his money, and the merchant buying and selling his goods are business men, each one using his own mental, physical and financial capital.
There are some vocations which cannot be defined as business in this sense, because their purpose is not to make money. Agassiz declared that he did not have time to make money; he was too intent upon scientific discovery. A preacher, though he receives money for his support, if he be a true prophet of God, does not allow the desire for money to influence his utterances or his life-work. Think of Moses, Elijah or Paul using their positions for the purpose of accumulating money and trimming their utterances and policy with a view to increasing their bank accounts! It is unthinkable. Not the preacher’s *nat the desire to make money is ignoble; temptation he ignobility consists in subjecting the higher to the lower, in allowing the incidental to control the essential, in being mastered by a selfish motive where unselfishness should be the law of life. The preacher’s business is to speak and live the word of God, whether it costs or pays; to make it pay when it ought to cost is to prostitute his calling. It is better, therefore, it seems to me, that all ministers should keep themselves untrammeled by money-making schemes. The temptation is sometimes hard to resist. Money is needed for so many things, and the minister’s popularity has a money value. Insurance companies bidding for popular favor, stock companies seeking investors, and real estate speculators have learned that the name of a preacher on a board of managers is worth money, and they are willing to pay him for it. He need not give his time; all they want is the influence of his name, and he will thus be helping a good business, while at the same time he is receiving a neat little income. The temptation is subtle, but he had better not yield if he prizes his vocation as a minister of Christ. I heard D. L. Moody say that more preachers had been ruined by entering into money-making schemes than by any other one cause, and he had opportunities for very wide observation. Many pastors and evangelists seem to have lost their hold upon God and man through financial transactions. Let men endowed of God with capacity for making money give their time and strength to it, realizing that they may thus be laborers together with God, but let us who are called into the ministry of reconciliation give ourselves wholly to it, suffering, if need be, the limitations of poverty rather than risk the more serious limitations of an unsavory reputation. Some eagles of the pulpit have had their wings clipped by the money-getting spirit; and some who are not eagles have become so weighted by it that they cannot run with success the ministerial race.
Our subject this morning deals with business in the narrow sense of making money by labor, physical and mental. In this kind of business labor and capital are capital always friendly. Capitalists may be hostile and labor to laborers, and laborers may be hostile to capitalists; but capital is always and everywhere the friend of labor, as labor is the friend of capital. The railroad corporation may despise the laborers who build its roads, but its money is the friend of these laborers. The laborers may hate the railroad corporation, but their labor is the friend of the corporation. While laborers and capitalists engage in war, capital and labor face each other pleading for peace, and ready to begin their friendly work together as soon as the selfishness and anger of men will permit them. Capital needs labor and labor needs capital. One cannot do without the other. To injure one is to injure the other; to help one is to help the other.
In considering the ethics of business we need to settle three things: (i) What kind of business may one engage in? (2) What methods of business are right? (3) What motives should control in business life?
I. The Nature of Business. This may be determined by the Scripture u Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” A business that enriches us while it works harm to our neighbor cannot be right. A business, therefore, that depends for success upon pure chance cannot be defended upon ethical grounds. Gambling bears the relation to robbery that dueling does to murder. One man meets another on the street and shoots him down; that is murder. Two men agree to meet, with their seconds, in the early morning, and shoot at each other until one or both are killed; that also is murder. The difference is that in the first case there was one murderer; in the second case there were two.
One man meets another in a dark alley, and compels him to give up his purse; that is robbery, the essence of which is getting something for nothing. Two men sit around a table, and agree on the shuffling of cards or the throwing of dice to rob each other. In the first case there was one robber, in the second case there are two. The essence of robbery and gambling is the desire to get something for nothing, and whatever depends upon pure chance is gambling.
There is in all business an element of risk, but when its success depends upon industry, intelligence and skill, the risk is not measured by chance. Success or failure then depends upon the wise use of means. When means are eliminated and success depends upon luck, the gambler’s feverish unrest takes the place of the toiler’s patient work. This desire to get money without earning it is the ruin of many a man. The lucky individual is in the long run the most unlucky. Men who made their millions in stock gambling have died in poverty. A man who at one time could draw his check in Chicago for twenty millions was in his old age proprietor of a junk-shop in New York City, If he had begun life in the junk-shop and refrained from gambling, he would, doubtless, have had a competency for old age. And his poverty of purse was not the saddest thing about the old junk-shop keeper. It was plain that he had lost all stamina of character, and in disposition was a sour, carping misanthrope. Such is the end of the gambler. Let the sight of the moral carcasses at the foot of this precipice keep us from venturing too near its edge.
A business like the liquor traffic, which makes money out of the misery and degradation of others, cannot be defended on moral grounds. The plea that others will the liquor engage in it and make money if I do not traffic would justify theft and murder. The fact that the State licenses this iniquity and receives revenue from it is the blackest blot on christian civilization. The State cannot afford to legitimize a business which is outlawed by reason and the conscience of good men. To continue to do so will be to change glorious destiny into fearful doom.
And those who are protected by the State in this iniquitous business have begun an aggressive campaign of education and advertising. A speaker before a brewers’ convention some time ago urged the saloon-keepers to cultivate appetite by giving drink to boys, saying that nickels spent in that way will return dollars in the future. The advertising columns of our dailies, the pages of our magazines, the bulletin boards of our streets and the placards in our trolley cars are now proclaiming the merits of alcohol, after science has labelled it a poison and philanthropy has pronounced it the scourge of Christendom. Men who haye heretofore been at least decent enough to be ashamed of their business, while apologizing for it on the ground of necessity, are now glorying in their shame. Satan is at his old work of transforming himself into an angel of light. We must now do more than keep our boys out of the saloon. We must defend them against the encroachment of the saloon, which would thrust its painted face before them at every turn.
This state of affairs has in it some encouragement. The active propagandism of the liquor traffic will wake up drowsy christians to a sense of their duty at the ballot-box. The bravado of the giant will invite the stone from David’s sling, and wre hope to see his prostrate form a lifeless corpse on the evening of some election day.
No conscientious man can make money out of a business which works harm to his neighbor. The man who has invested money in the purchase of brewery bonds, partners and draws his big dividends, is about as bad in crime as the brewer or saloon-keeper. He is one of the pillars of this temple of Bacchus, and the knowledge of this fact makes him a caterpillar in the temple of God. The church member who rents his property for saloon or prostitution purposes is a worse enemy of the cause of Christ than the avowed infidel. The “whited sepulchre” of his profession does not conceal the “rottenness and dead men’s bones” of his inner life. To those who know his double life his presence in the church of God is malodorous and ghastly. If some one should take his name from the church roll and write it over the door of the saloon and the house of ill-fame, from which he gets his rent, it would serve him right. The money he places in the collection-box on Sunday is so foul that it pollutes every clean dollar it touches. To have it go with the widow’s mite or the rich man’s honest dollar, baptized in prayer, is like herding together sheep and swine, doves and vultures, demons and angels. The church that knowingly uses the devil’s money in doing the Lord’s work will have to pay interest to the devil in some way, and it is better not to be under such obligation to the Prince of Darkness. The interest will sooner or later amount to a mortgage, which the Old Fiend will be glad to foreclose.
The investment in theatre stock is about as bad, for the theatre as an institution, despite the occasional clean play and player, is in the business of polluting morals.
To sum it all up in a word, the business of every christian man should be able to stand the test of the Ten Commandments and the higher law, * ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
II. Methods of Business. The law which rules the nature of one’s business should also apply to its methods, and under this head let us consider four things.
( i ) Honesty. Paul wrote to the Romans, who lived in an atmosphere of diplomatic intrigue, “Provide things honest in the sight of all men.” There is a universal concensus of opinion as to honesty. It means truth in word and action. It is the opposite of sham and deception. The honest merchant will tell the truth about his goods. The honest manufacturer will not put a first-class label on a second-class article. A man in a Boston inquiry meeting said, “I cannot become a christian, because I sell second-class goods with first-class labels.” And he was right. The poor fellow had sold his immortal soul at a paltry price, but he was wise enough not to try and hide the transaction from God. He refused to put his dishonesty under the cloak of religion.
Honesty also tells the whole truth. A man once said to Mr. Moody, “If I become a christian it will bankrupt my business. I am a soap manufacturer, and every good thing I say about my soap is true; but there is one thing I do not say: it rots the clothes. If I should tell all the truth about it nobody would buy it.” Let us hope that he did not persist in bartering his soul for soap; but he had the true conception of honesty, which demands that we shall not act a lie by refusing to tell the whole truth.
A story with a moral is told of A. T. Stewart’s first day in business. A clerk told a lady that the colors in the calico he sold her would not fade. When she left Mr. Stewart said to the clerk,” That woman will find A. T. STEWART’S tnat you misrepresented those goods, and policy after a few days she will return and want
her money back, and she will be right. I do not want my customers deceived as to the quality of goods.” “Well, Mr. Stewart,” replied the clerk, “if that is to be your way of doing business, I will seek employment elsewhere; you will not last long.” But A. T. Stewart did last. However, I have not since heard from that clerk.
Honesty is the best policy, always and everywhere. The man who is honest for the sake of policy is not an honest man, but he is a shrewd one. He knows what is an honest f or his best interests. The man who is honest clerk because he is conscientious cannot afford to
refuse present gain in the hope of larger gain in the future, If he seems to fail because he is conscientious, his seeming failure will be the stepping-stone to success. No financial gain can atone for moral loss when a dishonest act is committed or condoned. Better fail in purse and succeed in character than succeed in purse and fail in character. A big bank account cannot make amends for poverty of manhood, and the dishonest man cannot have the consciousness of manliness. The sense of meanness will always mar his enjoyment of riches. There is more happiness in clean poverty than in polluted wealth. A young man in a New York jewelry store was asked by a lady for a gold ring of eighteen carats. He informed her that the best rings they had on hand at present were only sixteen carats, and the proprietor, after the customer had gone, reprimanded him, saying, 4 ‘That woman does not know the difference between sixteen carats and eighteen carats, and you should have sold her a ring.” “But,” answered the young man, UI cannot deceive anybody.” The proprietor replied, “Little misrepresentations like that are legitimate in business.” I presume that the clerk fell into the ways of business suggested by his employer, and if he became a robber by taking money from the till, that proprietor was to blame, for he gave him his first lessons in dishonesty.
Dr. Thain Davidson tells of another young man who, in measuring off some silk, noticed a flaw, and frankly told the lady customer that the silk would not suit her an honest because of the flaw. An old farmer in the father country, two days afterward, received a note which had in it this sentence: u Your son is not sharp enough for business. He will never make a merchant.” The next train brought the farmer to the great city, and he hastened to the store to see what was the matter with his boy. When he was informed by the merchant of his boy’s foolish act in telling the customer of the flaw in the silk and thus failing to make a sale, the farmer said, u I wish you to know, sir, that I am proud of my boy, and would not have wished him to act otherwise than he has done. God will provide another opening for him.” Happy the father who has such a son, and happy the son who has been blest with such a father. Conscientiousness like that has even a higher money value than a willingness to lie, by word or silence, to make a few dollars. A cashier in a bank was discharged by the president because he refused to do what his conscience did not approve, and within a few days that same president recommended the discharged cashier for a position with a much larger salary. “You can depend upon him,” he said, u for he will not go against his conscience.”
A business man in Boston said to me the other day, u s. am bothered with rogues and liars amongst my employees. Business would be a delight if I could secure only honest men.” He was willing to pay for honesty. The superintendent of the Assaying Office in New York City told me that most of his employees were christian men, some of wrhom had been with him thirty years, and their wages were increased because they were known to be perfectly reliable. Men who handle gold dust, to be worth anything at all, must be honest and reliable.
Young Adam Clark was discharged because he refused to stretch a piece of cloth, that he might make it measure the required length, and as a result we have u Adam Clark’s Commentaries on the Bible,” a monument of learning. If Adam had consented to stretch the cloth, he would, doubtless, have remained a clerk, provided he had not found his way into the penitentiary. I do not even know the name of the merchant who discharged him. People are not careful to preserve the names of such men.
(2) Industry. Some one has said, “Man is an animal as lazy as circumstances will permit,” and I fear that there is too much truth in the saying. Few of us are born strenuous. We like our ease. Sleep is popular.
Laziness is the worst enemy of business life. Thomas Edison, when asked for the secret of his success in life, replied, u I never look at the clock.” Most of us like to why short have a clock in full view, so that we may see hours? just when to stop work. We forget that work
is in itself a blessing. Adam, in his purity, wras placed in a garden, not that he might enjoy flowers and fruits, but that he might tend it. The restored Eden, which we call heaven, is a place of service. Out of work, even here, means out of heaven. A heaven of everlasting lounging, for which some orientals sigh, has no place in the Scriptures. If the workman wants short hours, that he have a change of work from the manual to the mental or the spiritual, he deserves the enactment of an eight-hour law; but if he wants short hours that he maylounge in the saloon, or even at home, lazily wasting time, he would turn a blessing into a curse. A lazyfellow was asked why he slept so late in the morning, and he replied, u I am employed hearing counsel. Industry advises me to get up, and sloth insists that I lie still. There are so many reasons, pro and con, that it takes a long time to argue the case, and dinner-time may arrive before it is settled.” Listening to the arguments of sloth has wrecked many a life. It is the man who regards the case as settled on the side of industry who does anything in this world.
I know that the ability to rest is as important as the ability to work. Doing nothing as a business is very wearisome. The honest toiler is the sound sleeper, and need of t° the man of strenuous exertion the vacation is rest relaxation and strength; but, in order to relax, there must be something to relax. Rest implies industry, and industry, more than ability, is the secret of success. Sir Isaac Newton insisted that he was not a genius, but he did the work of a genius because he had learned the secret of persistent application. “My sword is too short,” said a Spartan soldier to his mother, as he started to battle. u Add a step to it” was the reply; and if one will add to the short sword of mediocre ability the step of patient industry, he will conquer the difficulties that confront him in making life a success. u Seest thou a man diligent in business; he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men.”
(3) Altruism. Try your business by the Golden Rule, which means to live, let live, and help live. The rich merchant who would crush the shop-keeper on the opposite corner by selling his wares at less than cost, deserves the malediction of mankind. The trust that would destroy a man’s business because he will not come into their combination is a devil-fish whose slimy tentacles should be cut off by law. The trades-union that would compel a man to join it, or starve him and his family, is a diabolical tyranny. The trust and the trades-union have a right to organize for the promotion of their own interests, but they have no right to compel others, on penalty of death or starvation, to come into their ranks. To do so is to adopt the methods of the Spanish Inquisition.
When the rule of gold displaces the Golden Rule there is always loss. No amount of financial gain will atone for a greedy, grasping disposition, and one need golden rule vs. not resist the sense of satisfaction which rule of gold y feejs wnen now and then it is made
apparent that greed has overreached itself and suffers loss in the attempt to rob its neighbors. Several years ago, in the oil regions of Pennsylvania, a pastor invested his savings in a well which yielded some oil and much salt water. A greedy neighbor bought the land adjoining his and sank a well, hoping that he would drain off the oil from the pastor’s well; but the result was the opposite of what he expected, for he drained off the salt water into his own well, and left the pastor’s well to flow freely with a good quality of oil. And this is a parable which grasping greed needs everywhere to remember. The man who would impoverish his neighbor for his own enrichment is certain to impoverish himself. Even if he should succeed in getting his neighbor’s money he will impoverish his own soul, and soul poverty is the worst of pauperism.
(4) Morality, The truly altruistic man is moral. He lives in right relation with his fellows. And yet it is so important that christian men should conduct their business in accordance with sound moral principles that I A ruined venture to make a separate division and label life jt to JVIorality.^ Let no moral taint be in the
nature or method of your business. Professor Drummond was right when he said that the primary purpose of a factory is not to make things but men. The factory which makes good shoes and bad men is worse than a failure, though it may pay fifty per cent, annual dividend. The factory that makes good cloth and bad character is a curse to the world. A young man in Philadelphia, who was discharged on account of drunkenness and other dissolute habits, wrote the following letter to his employer: 64 Sir, I came into your service uncorrupt in principles and in morals, but the rules of your house required me to spend my evenings at places of public entertainment and amusement in search of customers. To accomplish my work in your service I was obliged to drink with them and join with them in their pursuit of pleasure. I went with them to the theatre and the billiard table, but it was not my choice. I went in your service; your interest required it. I have added thousands of dollars to the profits of your trade, but at what expense you now see and I know too well. You have become wealthy, but I am poor indeed, and now this cruel dismissal from your employ is the recompense I receive for a character ruined and prospects blasted in helping to make you a rich man.” This rich man deserves that the furies of a lashing conscience shall follow him through time and eternity, if he does not repent and make amends for the wrong he did that young man. The young men who are reared in christian families, when informed that they are expected to do this dirty sort of work, revolt against it, but sometimes make the plea of necessity and submit. Their finer instincts are like an ivy vine I saw the other day which a barber had planted in his large window and
the revolt was trvmg to niake it grow away from the OF conscience jjgjlt jnto te darkness of his room. He
had fastened it down along the wall, and when I saw it the stem and every leaf was turned toward the light. The whole vine was in revolt against such treatment. Many a young man with christian instincts does revolt against the efforts of his employers to train him into familiarity with the dark ways of sin and shame, but seems as helpless as this vine to stop the process. Only God can help him. May he yield to this gravitation toward the light, and ever refuse to be trained toward the dark, where there is only withering and death.
III. Motives in Business. Some men make money just for the sake of making money. Business is what Ruskin calls it, ua great game.” They make a dollar that they may make another dollar. It is like gaining runs in baseball. A run is good for nothing but to count, and the game is to make more runs.
Others make money just to gratify the flesh. They want what money can buy: a luxurious home, sumptuous fare, fine clothes, carriages and automobiles. Trips to Europe are to them the summum bonum of life. Still others make money that those they love may have the necessities and luxuries of life. And others desire to do good. They would like to leave the world better than they found it.
But the highest of all motives is that we may serve God in serving our fellow-man. “To do good and communicate forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” This Scripture unites philanthropy with spirituality. It urges us to please God by helping
Ethics of Business
man. Such a motive uplifts and inspires. It keeps us on the earth while we look up to heaven, and this looking up lifts up. The sense of partnership with God ennothe highest bles 5 the honor of it cannot be surpassed. motive ‘pke thought of stewardship which recognizes God as proprietor, while we do business on His capital, carries with it a sense of dependence upon Him as well as responsibility in using His gifts that cannot fail to make noble character. Business men assure us that it is difficult for them to foster their religious experiences and to keep up their religious duties while absorbed in the secular. Observatories built in great cities are almost useless, for the jar of the rumbling wheels of commerce shakes the telescope so that the astronomer cannot make delicate observation of the heavens; and the christian business man, in the rush and turmoil of business life, finds that his religious duties are interfered with. It is hard to pray in the midst of so much confusion.
The difficulty arises from a too clear-cut distinction between business and religion. Let him wipe out the word “secular” from his vocabulary. He is God’s business and steward, and now his office becomes sacred religion as a church; his ledger is as holy as his
Bible, for both are God’s books. He can now pray without ceasing, for he realizes the need of God as much in his counting-room as in his prayer meeting. The whole world has become a temple, God’s house, where God is worshipped in consecrated service through the week, as in public song and prayer on the Sabbath. Every spot is holy ground, and every day a holy day, every garment a vestment, and every meal a sacrament. The Sabbath he hallows by closing his store for the worship of God in the sanctuary; Monday he hallows by opening his store for God’s presence and help, so that it, too, becomes a sanctuary of service. He goes to the Lord’s supper, to memorialize his death, and when he goes to breakfast, dinner or supper he recognizes the living Lord as his guest and thanks him for His presence. The middle wall of partition between the secular and the religious has been broken down. The veil of the temple is rent in twain, and all God’s house in which we live is turned into a Holy of Holies. He still delights to hear the music of organ and choir in the church, while the melody in his heart is a choir singing unto the Lord all through the week.
Queen Elizabeth asked a rich English merchant to go on a mission for the crown. The merchant remonstrated, saying that such long absence would be fatal the *° s business. “You take care of my busisupreme ness,” replied the queen, u and I will take care of yours.” When he returned he found that his business, through the patronage and care of the queen, had increased in volume, and he was richer than when he left. So every business man can afford to place the interests of Christ’s kingdom first, for the promise is clear and unmistakable, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Make money for Christ, and He will make money for you. Supply His needs, and He will supply yours. Keep His laws, and He will keep you. Do His will, and He will look after your welfare. If losses come, He will see that they are ultimate gains. Link your destiny in time and eternity with Jesus Christ, and bankruptcy will be impossible. Prize the spiritual above the material. Transmute the seen and temporal into the unseen and eternal. Lay up treasures in heaven, so that death, which impoverishes the rich worldling, will be your enrichment. Ever seek Christ’s u Well done” here and you will receive it hereafter.